Category Archives: REH

Atlantis and the pulps

16 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Historical context, Podcasts etc., REH, Scholarly works

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A clearly-delivered 30-minute video lecture on the influence of the myth of Atlantis on R.E. Howard, by pulp history scholar Jeff Shanks. Including discussion of the Atlantis fringe authors, who Lovecraft eventually got around to reading circa the mid to late 1920s.

Lovecraft had of course written an early Atlantis story in “The Temple” (1920), in which the Prussian narrator suggests the sunken city was the forerunner of Ancient Greece.

He commented to Clark Ashton Smith in June 1926 about his reading of The Story of Atlantis (1896)…

[he writes that he is undertaking new reading] of vast interest as background or source material — which has belatedly introduced me to a cycle of myth as developed by modern occultists and sophical charlatans … I only wish I could get hold of more of the stuff. What I have read is The Story of Atlantis [1896]… by W. Scott Elliott.

He then attempted the germ of an Atlantis-meets-Roman Britain story in his fragment “The Descendant” (c.1927)…

Gabinius had, the rumour ran, come upon a cliffside cavern where strange folk met together and made the Elder Sign in the dark; strange folk whom the Britons knew not save in fear, and who were the last to survive from a great land in the west that had sunk, leaving only the islands with the raths and circles and shrines of which Stonehenge was the greatest.

But this would have rather improbably placed Atlantis somewhere just off his beloved ancestral Cornwall and Devon. One suspects that even Lovecraft balked at the task of turning the homely Isles of Scilly into the evil-haunted remnant mountain-tops of a sunken Atlantis.

R.E. Howard audio books

15 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by in Odd scratchings, Podcasts etc., REH

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Update: link-rot repaired, August 2023.
Update: added mention of a book of Conan tales by Lin Carter / de Camp, October 2018.

If you can’t afford the excellent Tantor audio books of Conan, there are now some free R.E. Howard unabridged audio stories with semi-pro and listenable narrators…

Howard’s Conan stories in free audio, ordered in story-world chronology:

* “The Frost Giant’s Daughter”

* “The Tower of the Elephant” (abridged, semi-dramatised)

* “The Tower Of The Elephant” (unabridged, narrated)

* “The God in the Bowl” (unpublished during his lifetime)

* “Rogues in the House”

* “Black Colossus” (the story text at Project Gutenberg)

* “Queen of the Black Coast” (also on YouTube)

* “Shadows in the Moonlight” (and part 2)

* “A Witch Shall Be Born”

* “Shadows in Zamboula”

* “The Slithering Shadow” (aka “Xuthal of the Dusk”)

* “The Devil in Iron”

* “The People of the Black Circle”

* “The Vale of Lost Women” (unpublished during his lifetime)

* “The Pool Of The Black One” (no longer online as free quality audio, see the full text at Project Gutenberg)

* “Red Nails”

* “The Jewels of Gwahlur” (aka “The Servants Of Bit-Yakin”)

* “Beyond the Black River”

* “The Black Stranger” (unpublished during his lifetime, aka “Treasure of Tranicos” after re-working by de Camp, to have it fit better between “Beyond the Black River” and “The Phoenix on the Sword”)

* “The Phoenix on the Sword”

* “The Scarlet Citadel” (and part 2 3 4 5 6 and 7)

* The Hour of the Dragon (aka Conan the Conqueror, a novel)

“The God in the Bowl” and “The Vale of Lost Women” — unpublished during his lifetime — don’t show Howard writing at his best. And “The Slithering Shadow” and “The Devil In Iron” are said to be far from the best of the Conan stories.

There is also a Books for the Blind audiobook of the collection of stories Conan the Swordsman (1978). This collection of briskly-plotted gap-fillers for the Conan chronology is from Nyberg / Lin Carter / de Camp. Their stories successfully mimic Howard, only lacking some of the small telling details that he carefully wove into his stories. Their book has, in the book-order:

~ “The People of the Summit” (after “Rogues in the House”) (begins at 1 hour 12 minutes into the book reading) (good)
~ “Shadows in the Dark” (after “Black Colossus”) (good)
~ “The Star of Khorala” (after “Shadows in Zamboula”) (a long story, but a lesser one – very skippable)
~ “The Gem in the Tower” (between “The People of the Black Circle” and “The Pool of the Black One”) (excellent)
~ “The Ivory Goddess” (before “Beyond the Black River”) (mediocre)
~ “Moon of Blood” (after “Beyond the Black River”) (excellent)

For those who can afford them, Tantor’s audio book collections of R.E. Howard’s original Conan and others use the modern Del Ray texts and are read with excellence:

The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian.
The Bloody Crown of Conan.
The Conquering Sword of Conan (full free-sample story).

Also from Tantor:

The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane.
Kull: Exile of Atlantis.
Bran Mak Morn: the Last King.

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard.

Sadly it seems Tantor can’t sell into the UK, and nor are downloads available through Audible.co.uk. So Brits will have to go to eBay and pay a premium (the days of bargains on eBay are long gone, as are the days of cheap trans-Atlantic shipping), or have an American friend buy them for you and send them over.

Also by Howard in audio…

The collection Solomon Kane: Red Shadows and three Solomon Kane poems read by a Shakespearean actor.

Lovecraft and Howard in Africa

01 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by in Historical context, REH

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On the Two-Gun Raconteur blog today Keith Taylor surveys some scientific history to try to illuminate why Lovecraft and R.E. Howard might have been spurred to discuss the idea that ‘a white race or tribe had once lived in Africa’. This was a commonly accepted theory by the mid 1920s, apparently bolstered by archaeological and survey evidence and then given an added dimension by sparse Boskop archaeological skull finds from 1913 onwards — the latter being the focus of Taylor’s blog musings.

One can see this then-common idea in action in a Lovecraft letter, written after hearing a vivid and extensive first-hand account of visiting the Zimbabwe ruins in Africa. Lovecraft had had this account directly from his friend Edward Lloyd Sechrist …

This essay has been replaced by the essay in my new book of revised, expanded, and footnoted versions of my recent Tentaclii essays, Lovecraft in Historical Context: fifth collection.

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Robert E. Howard journal #17

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Historical context, REH, Scholarly works

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New REH: Two-Gun Raconteur journal, #17. Apparently limited to 200 copies. Which seems odd, in the age of print-on-demand. Two essays that might interest Lovecraftians…

* “What the Thak?: Anthropological Oddities in Howard’s Works” by Jeffrey Shanks, illustrated by Clayton Hinkle.

* “Robert E. Howard and Past Lives: Reincarnation, Dreams and Race Memories” by Barbara Barrett, illustrated by Richard Pace.

Lovecraft’s 1932 library list

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by in Historical context, REH

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A PDF of The Cross Plainsman (Autumn 2000) contains a transcript of the 1932 list of books owned by Lovecraft, sent to R.E. Howard. Presumably it was a partial list, items of interest to Howard?

“There are then appended the pages listing Lovecraft’s personal library at the time, August 1932. […] I append here the list of books in the 1932 HPL collection:”

Interesting to see that Lovecraft owned a pirated amateur edition of the famous Not at Night omnibus.

Also on the shelves in 1932 was “Theory of Pneumatology – Jung – Shilling”. Not, as you might think, the Jung. But rather Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling, a man of the late 18th century.

“This [The Theory of Pneumatology] is in reply to the question, what ought to be believed or disbelieved concerning presentiments, visions and apparitions, according to nature, reason and scripture. Contents: Introduction; Examination and Refutation of the Principles of Materialism; Remarks Upon the Nature of Man; On Presentiments, Predictions, Enchantments and Prophesying; On Visions and Apparitions; Brief Summary; Notes. Also included is a biographical sketch of the author, Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling.”

Solomon Kane (2009) finally available in USA on DVD

08 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by in Films & trailers, REH

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Cool, I just heard that Solomon Kane is finally out on DVD in the USA. I’ve no idea what delayed this fine 2009 movie, or stopped it getting to the cinemas in the USA. I can only imagine that there was perhaps some spurious legal challenge by a copyright troll, going on behind the scenes?

Thanks to Lovecraft is Missing for the new review of the DVD. I saw the movie way back in 2010 in the UK, and enjoyed it. I thought it was a fine and respectful evocation of R.E. Howard’s Puritan hero, beautifully designed and lit, and well acted with good period accents. The flaws were not very many, but were annoying: two jarring jumps in the plot during the first third, as if the makers hadn’t filmed quite enough material to bridge the gap; many lost opportunities to visually foreshadow the distinctive look of the main bad-guy (for instance via having his minions wear his face as crude tattoos or scrawl it on walls etc); and the ending is a little too “Mines of Moria cave-troll battle” (in a cheesy kind of way, in that it resembles LoTR far too strongly).

SolomonKanePoster

The plan was apparently that Solomon Kane would have been the first of a trilogy. Africa was mooted as being the next stop. But Puritan New England, and a slight blending with the historical back-story of Lovecraft’s Mythos, would have seemed a much better choice. Anyway, due to the bizarre and unexplained four-year hiatus in actually getting this movie to a U.S. audience, it doesn’t seem we’ll get to see the next two movies.

R.E. Howard’s Lovecraftian stories

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Lovecraft as character, Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc., REH

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I thought I might read R.E. Howard’s six ‘Lovecraft influenced’ stories, for Halloween. As best I can make out from twenty minutes of cursory research, the R.E. Howard Lovecraftian-ish tales are…

* The best two:

  “The Black Stone”

  “The Children of the Night”

* Lesser two:

  “The Cairn on the Headland”

  “The Thing on the Roof”

* Two tangential stories:

  “Worms of the Earth” (Generally said to be the best Bran Mak Morn story, with a few Lovecraftian bits and bobs mentioned?)

  “The Fire of Asshurbanipal” (Reportedly, only the ending is relevant?)

All six are available in the audio book form in the collection The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard [on Amazon USA], read by veteran audio-book reader Robertson Dean. “The Black Stone” is also available for free as a less memorable audio reading.

It’s been quite a long time since I read Howard’s Conan et al, and it’ll be interesting to see what the original Howard experience is like in polished audio-book form. I read Howard as a boy, at about the same time I first read Lovecraft, via the UK Panther paperback collections: Skull-face; The Valley of the Worm; and The Shadow Kingdom. From there I went to the UK Sphere King Kull collection, Tigers of the Sea (Cormac mac Art in the UK paperback), then into the numerous UK Sphere Conan paperbacks (one or two of which were quite rare at that time, and it was difficult to gather a full set) and the Solomon Kane stories (possibly via a tatty import copy of the U.S. Centaur Books paperback). More recently I read one of his werewolf stories, but that’s been it until now.

Howard’s “The Black Stone” – free podcast

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc., REH

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A free unabridged audio reading of perhaps the most Lovecraftian of Robert E. Howard’s stories, “The Black Stone” (1931). The new recording was kindly made by Cthulhupodcast, over the summer in July 2011…

Part One

Part Two

Above: Illustration for the story, by British artist Greg Staples

A ten-page comic book adaptation appeared in Marvel’s Savage Sword Of Conan (March 1982 issue).

The Gothic Imagination: Conversations on Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction in the Media

15 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in New books, REH

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The Gothic Imagination: Conversations on Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction in the Media is shipping now. The table-of-contents makes it look a lot more interesting than the publisher’s blurb does (which foregrounds the William Shatner involvement, presumably in the vain hope that Trekkies will buy it)…

Preface by Richard Holmes / Prefatory Note by James Gunn

INTRODUCTION: VOICES HEARD ‘ROUND THE COSMIC CAMPFIRE by John C. Tibbetts

THE LOVECRAFT CIRCLE

* “The Provocative Abysses of Unplumbed Space”: S.T. Joshi Explores the Universe of H.P. Lovecraft
* “I Am Providence”: Henry Beckwith on H.P. Lovecraft
* “Psycho Is Not About a Shower Scene!”: Robert Bloch
* “From Providence to Liverpool”: Ramsey Campbell
* “Certain Things Associated with the Night”: T.E.D. Klein

THE HEROIC AGE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION

* “Robert E. Howard and The Whole Wide World”: Dan Ireland
* “Batman and Me”: Bob Kane
* “The Man Who Explained Miracles”: John Dickson Carr
* “Superman is a Friend”: Christopher Reeve
* “Wonder’s Child”: Jack Williamson
* “Ragnarok and Relativity”: Poul Anderson
* “The Way the Future Was”: Frederik Pohl
* “I Tell People Stories”: Wilson Tucker
* “The Complete Enchanter”: L. Sprague De Camp

THE BRADBURY COLLABORATIONS

* “Stan and Ollie”: Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen
* “Joe and Me”: Bradbury and Joseph Mugnaini

THE BRADBURY CIRCLE (Friends and Associates)

* “Let’s Put on a Show!”: Julius Schwarz
* “Mister Monster”: Forrest J Ackerman
* “Dandelion Chronicles”: William F. Nolan
* “The Repairman Cometh”: F. Paul Wilson
* “A Bradbury Companion”: Donn Albright

DESTINATION: MARS!

* “Back to Barsoom”: Bob Zeuschner Talks about the Mars Books of Edgar Rice Burroughs
* “This Is Where We Start Again”: Kim Stanley Robinson

THE EXTRAVAGANT GAZE

* “A Sublime Madness”: Professors Albert Boime and Tim Mitchell Talk about Goya, Gericault, and Caspar David Friedrich
* “Scenes from Childhood”
* “Album for the Young”: Maurice Sendak
* “There’s a Lot of Reality to These Fantasies”: Charles Sturridge and Fairy Tale
* “The Mysteries of Chris Van Allsburg”
* “Gahan Wilson’s Diner”

“WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE…”: TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET AND STAR TREK

* Frankie Thomas on “Tom Corbett” and the Early Days of “Live” Television
* Four members of the Enterprise crew speak out about Star Trek: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, De Forest Kelly, and George Takei

THE MUSIC OF TERROR

* “Symphonie fantastique”: Jack Sullivan

POSTMODERN GOTHIC

* “The Night Ride of Charles Beaumont”: Jason V Brock
* “The Kiss That Bites”: Susie McKee Charnas
* “A Magellan of the Interior”: Peter Straub
* “The Billion Year Spree”: Brian Aldiss
* “Savage Pastimes”: Gothic Schlock and True-Crime Horrors: Harold Schechter and Rick Geary
* “Different Engines”: Alternate Worlds and Anachronistic Technologies: Cynthia Miller and T. L. Reid

“THE HERESY OF HUMANISM”: GREG BEAR AND GREGORY BENFORD

EPILOGUE